


Closure

by narsus



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Break Up, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It's easier that way.  Peter won’t feel the urge to look back and Richard will not be able to stare after him before he goes the other way.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closure

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy belongs to John le Carré, StudioCanal and Working Title Films.

He has a car. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have driven save for the strange anonymity of taking a bus. The tube would have been faster but Peter isn’t in the mood for the hustle and bustle of Leicester Square, at any hour of the day, or even Piccadilly Circus. Regent’s Park is only two stops away from Piccadilly Circus and even that is less than a ten minute walk but, even a slow stroll down Shaftsbury Avenue wouldn’t really be respite enough from the crowds. The buses are regular enough that they’d been the preferable option. One, short, anonymous journey, had dropped him off by Regent’s Park, and then it had been just a short, blessedly silent, walk to his destination. Past the bright lights of the Royal Academy of Music, past the pathways that would take him into the park proper, down the stretch of road that became three different roads as he walked it.

Peter has never been told who owns the apartment though he rather hopes it isn’t actually Richard’s. It’s entirely possible that it is and that the older man simply has a better grasp of investments than Peter will ever have. Even Ricki seems to hanker after real estate though, in his case, specifically in certain arrondissements of Paris. Peter doesn’t really understand the fascination with it. He spends most of his money on clothes. Even the occasional, indulgent, tin of foie gras from Fortnum’s is something George buys for him, always unexpectedly. Given the chance, Peter will live on any number of stews that look like approximations of something he once ate in any city of the Maghreb, or beans on toast. The latter probably being why Ricki has taken to cooking him what might even be genuine bouillabaisse, for all Peter knows, at an alarming frequency. It’s not as if Peter can’t look after himself. Not really. He might not be able to do the Times’ crossword in any approximation, still doesn’t understand the finer details of macroeconomics no matter how many times Ricki has tried to explain them, and most certainly doesn’t care enough about cricket to hold a conversation about it with George, but he’s not entirely useless. He might not read Rousseau or listen to the low drone of educational programming on Radio 4 but he can look after himself readily enough.

The idea of his being helpless is merely the delusion of other men. They take instances as indication. For some reason The Times crossword is a definite indicator. A lack of understanding of economics is another. He’s had other men attempt to explain the basic rules of cricket to him in the past, as if he wouldn’t know them, as if they’d have made him wicket-keeper time and time again at school, and then at university, if he hadn’t know how to play. Not everyone has read The Communist Manifesto, not everyone cares for Kant. Just because he’s read one, but not the other, just because he hasn’t cared to remember what he has read at all, doesn’t make him simple or foolish. He doesn’t care to remember because it’s far easier to tune out Ricki’s shouting matches, that inevitably end up with him arguing both sides against whoever he’s arguing with, when Peter doesn’t remember the first thing about cosmopolitanism. He reads magazines and listens to pop music rather than philosophical tomes and Maria Callas. And somehow, in the eyes of the men around him, that makes him foolish and fragile. As if listening to a Spaniard sing in French is any less sophisticated than listening to a Greek do it.

Once upon a time Peter would have blamed Richard for similar presumptions. Now, of course, he understands that Richard hadn’t meant to be cruel. It’s an odd conversation that they’ve had. The last conversation between them. A moment of closure that Peter had never expected, could never have even hoped for. Yet, against all reason, they have at last found an amiable balance. It wasn’t what he’d expected when they’d met accidentally, certainly wasn’t what he’d expected when he’d agreed to meet Richard, one last time. Sex, he’d expected, and possibly a few angry words. He’d hoped it wouldn’t have come to blows because his instincts are hard to rein in and, if it had come to it, he can’t presume that he would have been the better man and have helped Richard patch up his injuries afterwards. Honestly, he’d expected something quick and functional when it came to the sex as well. Had pictured being bent over the dining table and taken quickly and roughly before they’d parted ways. He’s had that sort of sex before, in public toilets, pub toilets, and once, in the recessed doorway of a rundown shopping arcade. Never with Richard, never after he’d met Richard, but he’d supposed there’d be a first time for everything. He hadn’t expected sentimental words or gentle touches. Hadn’t expected to be taken to bed and caressed as if Richard was trying to memorise every inch of his skin.

They’d talked afterwards instead of fleeing upon waking. Peter had curled his body against Richard’s and had stroked curious fingertips against the curled and greying hair on Richard’s chest. Richard had done most of the talking. He’d articulated other, more sensible, reasons for Peter to leave. Reasons that Peter hadn’t, at first, understood. Of course Richard is right about it all. Because Peter does give up so much of himself to remain at Richard’s side. It’s easy to let everything go when Richard is there for him, so easy to forget that out there, in the big bad world, he has to be so remarkably self-sufficient. And it’s tempting, damningly so, to entertain the idea of letting go entirely and allowing himself to drift, allowing himself to be led down any path that Richard might choose for him. So easy to _want_ to surrender everything that makes him who he is. It would be so much easier after all, and for that, Richard had apologised. Because Richard is, and ever will be, so painfully observant and self-aware. In retrospect Peter wonders if Richard and George aren’t so dissimilar at all. The only difference being that Richard doesn’t want Peter to lose himself while George welcomes it.

In the end, what Peter remembers, on the solitary walk home, is the sentiment rather than the words. That Richard does love him and that he, surprisingly, still loves Richard. That despite all that they’re still no good for each other. That being with Richard strips him of his identity and self-determination. That Richard hates himself for wanting Peter to surrender everything. It wouldn’t have been, had they tried to make a go of it, a healthy relationship at all. They both know it. Richard, just like so many others, wants to save him and Peter can barely resist the vertigo tumble into being saved.

“Maybe one day I’ll learn how to do this without wanting to shield you from everything.”  
“Maybe.”  
“Would you…?”  
“You can’t ask me that. You know what my answer would be.”  
“Maybe we both just need to do a little growing up.”  
“Maybe.”  
“Peter… I can’t promise you that…”  
“Not in this lifetime, no.”  
“I…”  
“If you let me go now…”  
“I know. Not in this lifetime.”

His cheeks had been damp when he’d pulled away from that last kiss. His own tears, not Richard’s. Richard hadn’t wept even at the last but his gaze had held such an intense regret that Peter wonders if, for Richard, that had been the same thing. He’d left first, allowing Richard time to lock up behind them, time to lose sight of him on the long walk home. It’s easier that way. Peter won’t feel the urge to look back and Richard will not be able to stare after him before he goes the other way.

It takes Peter an hour to make sense of it, to let everything settle, every sentiment and thought, as he walks, hands shoved deep into his pockets, under the early morning streetlights. To let himself understand that they do both have some growing up to do and that it’s unlikely that either of them will accomplish it in this lifetime. It would be so easy to give up everything but he can’t do that, just as Richard can’t contrive to shelter him from everything. Being with Richard makes him weak because he allows Richard to take the lead and shoulder all responsibility. Being with Peter makes Richard foolish because he allows himself to think that he holds all the solutions in his hands. Therein lies the tragedy. Love is not enough to make either of them whole and certainly they’re incapable of accomplishing that necessary step together.

Peter’s made it to Islington, on foot, all the way down Euston Road until it’s become Pentonville Road instead, when at last he decides that he’s walked out most of his need for contemplation. The bus takes him to Dalston Junction, as if the tube might be miraculously running at this hour, as if he might be trying to get back into the city, instead of turning back the way he came for the short walk home. He wonders if Richard has made it home yet, if the apartment is actually where Richard lives, if Richard will get enough sleep tonight to be awake enough to teach tomorrow. Then he realises that perhaps none of it matters. Whatever Richard does next will have nothing to do with Peter. They have parted for the last time and they both know that there is no going back. The entrance hall of Peter’s building is quiet when he closes the door behind him. Nothing, despite the momentousness of the occasion, has changed. The tiled floor is the same polished checkerboard that it’s always been, the spider plant in the corner still looks like it hasn’t grown in years, the stair rail is the same smooth brass under Peter’s hand as he begins to climb. And he finds that he feels as if everything is settled and calm, content, as if he hasn’t just kissed the love of his life goodbye. Perhaps he hasn’t. Only for the span of this lifetime. The thought makes him smile. They’ll find each other again, one day. He’s still smiling faintly, when he reaches his flat, and finds Ricki asleep on his couch and a cold pot of bouillabaisse on the stove.

**Author's Note:**

> The apartment is one of many at Hanover Gate Mansions.  
> The French Julio Iglesias’ album would be Aimer La Vie published in 1978.  
> Maris Callas is of course Greek-American.


End file.
